The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law
+ entire regions / areas where merely visiting those areas invites a highly non-trivial (think, more than 10% chance) chance of being kidnapped or murdered
+ every neighborhood and business has substantial, often military-grade private security
+ if credit exists at all, it exists outside of any formal banking structure and will have interest rates that are north of 30% APR, sometimes north of 100% APR. I've genuinely seen interest rates on credit as high as 2% *per day*, and these are rates that the local population is willing to pay for certain short term expenses (like food)
+ families that maintain good social relationships with the local police/militants/whoever-has-guns live substantially better lives than people without good social connections to the local authorities.
+ Travelers are told on repeat: "it's really not safe here for non-locals, you should stay inside and also reconsider being in this part of the world at all"
+ If the travelers are there for business reasons, they are probably assigned 24/7 armed guards (as many as 4 guards per traveler, each guard carrying full-auto weapons) by the locals, provided for free.
And while the US maybe has a neighborhood here or there which might be like this, every part of every major city in the country has more rule of law than the above.
Do you really think that judges that have to run for reelection every few years can be more trusted to rule on cases fairly, according to the law, rather than bending to popular whims?
The emphasis is on “more” trusted.
Supreme court justice positions should be limited to around thirteen (or some other prime number) years and should have mandatory cognitive capacity tests given yearly that are videotaped and broadcast live. The tests should be written by a nonpartisan panel of doctors chosen randomly from an applicant pool like a jury and refreshed every five years.
Rule of law is not about order nor safety
Statements like "the US does not have the rule of law" are laughable Reddit-tier comments that just make me sad for the current state of HN.
Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.
These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.
The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.
Yes, a big part of the idea is that laws are meant to also apply to the powerful, but it's difficult to accurately assess situations that are far away from you.
But I agree with you that nuance-free oversimplifications are likely unhelpful in any meaningful discussion.
These things don’t usually happen overnight, and for the vast majority of the public it will never be directly visible. It’s not like someone flips a “Anti-Antifa” switch and a bunch of ultra-starched uniformed troops start goose-stepping through Toledo. It’s a developing series of dynamic events, many of them will seem rational, justified even, but the result is concentrated executive power, a toothless legislature, a complicit judiciary, and a pliant mainstream press. I’m sure there are lots of people who will recognize these for what they are: an alarming number of dominoes falling towards a totalitarian dictatorship.
However the United States is a big, complex beast of a country, and the judiciary has not been fully captured, and neither has the legislature. All we need to do to stop this creeping authoritarianism is show up in-force and vote overwhelmingly against it this November. They will obviously try to confuse the issue with any close calls, and use such opportunities to assert dominion over local/state governments. We cannot let that happen. The best way to avoid such a scenario is to show up strong enough to make the results beyond question. That’s the ultimate test that we are still a nation of laws, and I am cautiously optimistic.
If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE. Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
Is that your threshold for "rule of law"? And I'm sorry, but what separates ICE from a roving gang setting up shakedown checkpoints, and executing at point blank range with no repercussions dissenters?
This is such an outrageously privileged and out-of-touch statement. Maybe YOU wouldn't know about Trump and ICE if you didn't read the news, but that's your personal microcosm. Please be more mindful about damage and harm done when you're ascribing your personal worldview onto others' actual reality.
How do you reconcile that proposition with the observable reality of the courts routinely blocking the current administration's excesses?
Interesting. Again, how do you reconcile that theory with the with the large number of court cases involving Trump's specific actions that managed to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, leading to many clear rulings against Trump, all within the first year and a half of his current term?
Like demolish a whole wing of the White House without any review or control. Starting a wa... sorry. Special Military Operation unilaterally etc.
All illegal but whatchagonnado when they already did it?
Dictators expect that people fear them, they control by fear and terror. If you can make jokes about leaders you show that you don't fear them, you show that they don't control you.
But the increase in corruption in US goverment indicates slow progress towards authoritarianism. This can be slow process, it can take years or decades, as was seen with Hitler and Stalin.
ICE excessive force use, encouraged by Trump and welcomed in large part of US population, could be the next step. This piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller describes the progression of authoritarianism:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for meThere's still reasonable civil debate here. But recently I was surprised to be called a fascist for pointing out the Nazis were national socialists. The poster included comments like "don't engage with this person he's obviously x y and z." I'm starting to see this kind of nonsense more and more on hacker news.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Amazing!
I also can't think of any US cities where neighborhoods have military grade armed security. Sure, there are places where every local business has an armed guard, but that's not really the same as hiring a trained private militia. The armed guards are for protecting against petty theft, not for protecting against organized crime.
On point four, I'm not sure if there are places in the US where minorities need to maintain relationships social relationships with cops as a survival mechanic, but it certainly doesn't apply to most cities, and I don't think it applies to anyone who is white.
On point five, I don't think you understand. There are parts of the world where having white skin will get you, quite literally, reminders every 15 minutes "hey it's really not safe for you here, do you want to hang out inside my shop while I call you a taxi?" No part of the US is like that for travelers. I know there are occasionally ICE raids that make the news, but "hey you strictly cannot be outside without a local chaperone" is just not a thing in the US.
She absolutely had people tell her every fifteen minutes she was not safe there and several offered to wait with her while she ordered a taxi.
Except none of the taxis ever came so she had to take a bus and a guy came with her just to make sure she didn’t try getting off at the wrong stop.
The cops were dressed like SWAT with what looked like full autos (but may not have been) and very forcefully told her she should not be there.
I wouldn't want my wife lost in Compton either but if the good guys outnumbered the bad guys by Inf% then it must not really be that bad. What would happen if it were Kinshasa instead of Compton.
Point 2: I was thinking that the most heavily armed private citizenry counts as "private security". More guns than people. Also far more private security guards than cops. To me that is exactly what "private security everywhere" looks like.
Point 4: To be honest i think point 3 actually applies to any place anywhere. Someone who knows the local police gets away with far more shit in my small german village. But "doesn't apply to anyone who is white" clearly is a sign of lack of rule of law. Laws should be race-independent and statistics show that in the US it's anything but.
Point 5: No chaperone-level warnings, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan all issue standing travel advisories about US gun violencem, the UK literally tells citizens "try not to walk through quieter areas alone, especially at night." And there were recommendations i got against business travel to the US especially with company issued equipment.
I mean, man, currently the US is not looking good from my point of view. I have a bunch of american friends who say immigration and everything else is ruining Germany. But looking at the stats it's looking quite okay:
Germany vs US: - Murder: 0.91 vs 5.7 per 100k
- Rape: 14 vs 40 per 100k
- Violent crime overall: 253 vs 380 per 100k
- Murder/homicide clearance: ~95% vs 50%
- Private security guard to police ratio: 0.9:1 vs 1.9:1
- Police killings: 10 vs 1100 per year
- Incarceration rate: 67 vs 600 per 100k
The highest incarceration rate in the developed world, ~4% of the world's population, ~25% of its prisoners. Are Americans just incredibly prone to being criminals? No. The crime rates above show the violent crime gap is ~1.5x, not 9x, and property crime is comparable or even lower than Germany's. ~95% of convictions are plea bargains extracted under threat of a "trial penalty", hundreds of thousands sit in jail pre-trial because they can't afford cash bail, and sentences run far longer for the same offenses. The US locks up 9x more people because it chooses to, not because Americans are more criminal. A state that imprisons its own population at Cuba and Rwanda rates while half its murders go unsolved, sells bail to the highest bidder, and runs on guilty pleas instead of trials. I would not correct anyone if they told me the US was not governed by the rule of law.
I doubt that most Americans comprehend what is living in a well managed citizens-first country were people are represented and many laws are passed just because the working class wants them.
If you compare the USA with the worst places on earth, then it is a good place. I hope that Americans aim higher and want to compare themselves with the best places to live in the world.
Switzerland has an excellent quality of life, far better education system, remarkable stability, and amazingly good healthcare. The companies pay people well, give them adequate time off, and has 16+ weeks of maternity leave.
There are some pretty significant downsides in Switzerland, too. It's highly conservative, hard to make friends with the Swiss, and fairly expensive, depending on where you live.
We live in Boston because of family. It's a decent enough place to live, and from my perspective, just about the closest that the US gets to Europe.
That seems like a good place to start looking.
(commissioned by the UN, polls are run by Gallup, report is put out by Oxford, and the editorial board is multinational and doesn't have any Nordic nationals; seems reasonably unbiased to me)
https://data.worldhappiness.report/table
It wasn't easy for me to interpret these rankings though, or how they came up with the life evaluation score. More explanation around that would have been helpful. The column headers have hover-descriptions, but they don't really say how the values were calculated.
Anyway - it does seem that Scandinavian countries are well represented at the top. That's not too surprising. Costa Rica at #4 is very unintuitive to me. Viet Nam at #1 for freedom is REALLY surprising to me, having visited there a number of times and having many Vietnamese friends. Likewise, The United States at 104 on freedom seems very weird.
That is true. I hope that people sees my comment as a push to do better, not a reason to give up. Things are never perfect, anywhere. And that's why we should continue pushing for more equality, defending the environment and making better the live of working class people.
The thing is, bar for success is simply higher than what US provides, and its not even that hard, just behave like a decent human being. The thing US provides if you don't have US passport is... not worth commenting on.
Precisely 0 of your presidents were ever punished for any action against citizens of other countries, despite starting aggressive wars, breaking peace and massacring people, or helping genocidares and war criminals escape justice, attacking international institutions that try to prevent that, etc.
You country of laws. :D
How many presidents were EVER punished for actions against citizens of other countries, unless other countries forced the president's country to do this (for example by winning a war)
Americans are not their government. Judging individuals based on the actions of their government is the type of ignorant behavior that breeds exactly the type of tribalism corrupt government officials are able to thrive in.
The one we're walking right now
The "Rule of Law" applies to everybody, including the President (recent decisions of the supreme court not withstanding - though they are very unfortunate). You have provisions for the freedom of press, freedom of speech, to be free from unreasonable searches, a reliable court system, etc, etc.
Searches at the border are murky legal territory, and I think that there is a problem here. You may also argue that the president and senate have too much power, or that gerrymandering is a serious problem (which it is). But from these you cannot conclude a general lawlessness.
(I'm from North-Western Europe, living in the US for a few decades now, so I feel that I have at least some data to compare.)
In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.
In other cases, it's insanity.
In normal World, criminals have rights for any kind of defense. And that's good, because government have power to make anyone "criminal".
Total breach of privacy by US government is a mirror to shitload of problems US has.
Europe js heading same direction (both the problems & government solutions).
> In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe.
What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in Europe" clearly shows you have zero idea what you're talking about, Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...
Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)
The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.
in a nutshell, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws in areas where the EU has competence.
While EU law is directly applicable or requires transposition into national law, member states retain autonomy in areas outside EU competence.
National courts are obligated to interpret domestic law in line with EU law.
National Constitutional Court/Supreme court, occasionally challenge EU law’s supremacy.
> Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)
Right.
You should make this as your life credo. Change "sometimes" into "always" till you learn something.
It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
And your bullshit about law working for the rich in US is really stupid. Extremly rich are almost untouchable everywhere in the World. Rich have a fighting chance of getting better outcome. And poor people have chance tk seek justice against roughly equal opponent. This is not about US, this is about how World works.
Somewhat of a paradox no? I'm guessing your belief here is that I learned something by what you just told me, so me not saying until now when I read your comment, is exactly what you wanted?
> It's called Continental law system, because main principles are same. And above that, there's EU legislation which is mandatory to all member states and is always to be adopted in national laws.
If you're under the belief that all countries in Europe have the same laws across borders because many countries have a civil law system, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's not how it works, and many countries have very different law systems, even if they come from the same origin. Neither would I say that countries "adopt EU legislation", but I guess that's a technicality. Usually you'd say that the countries implement their own laws based on the directives the European Commission comes up. But again, borderline nitpick, maybe better I don't mention this at all lest y'all get stuck on this particular point...
> This is not about US, this is about how World works.
Yeah, let me know when you understand how the entire world works friend ;) I won't claim to know that, although I do know home. But again, have fun, surely you'll get close! :)
Guess you'll never understand what is Continental law system. Or what is the meaning of word principle. Or what transposition is in terms of EU legislation.
Keep whining kiddo, that's the best proof that as always, your desperate attempt to portray yourself as someone knowledgeable, failed.
You can again give me one pathetic downvote ... that's your ultimate weapon. That will sure teach me a lesson for disrespecting big LLM gangsta with 96GB VRAM ... and all of sudden, crying for not being able to see tables in comments because all he has is mobile device.
Keep living your online fiction, slumdog millionaire.
My previous comments are related to the topic. Yours are just desperate attempt to portray yourself as someone knowledgeable, which you're not.
Keep living your online fiction, slumdog millionaire.
Wait, you want to eliminate innocent until proven guilty?
Straw man argument. Everybody has rights in the EU, including people suspected of being criminals, and of course victims.
Arguing that in the EU victims have no rights is insulting for anyone reading your comment. That far-right view of the world is false and it is just trying to misinform and create hate.
I would also say that in this case it is quite clear he intended and knowingly did this so he could be charged under either law. They were asking him for his phone in connection to an alleged crime and he provided the password which erases the phone.
Second, you only have to be aware that the police consider your phone to be evidence of a crime, which he was aware of, not have knowledge about the crime itself.
I don't think you understand the situation.
The feds told him they suspected evidence to be on the phone. He can't plead ignorance. He knew they thought there was evidence of a crime and gave them the duress code.
If a person did not know the phone had potential evidence then he wouldn't have intended or knowingly destroyed evidence and as such wouldn't be guilty of the crime...
If you read the law you would know you have no clue what you are talking about.
> You were first talking about a person committing a crime and now you are talking about being aware of a crime.
You must have me confused with someone else then. All of my words RE: crime are as follows:
had a crime been charged
you've committed no crime
aware of a crime
you have committed no crime
charged with a crime
presuming guilt for the crime
At no time have I talked about someone who has committed a crime. Part of the reason for that is that legally speaking, no one has committed a crime, unless and until evidence and due process have established the fact. Being guilty of a crime is a non-existent condition before such time. (Obviously we can talk about such a condition in everyday conversation, but I'm talking about what goes in the public record.) This also means "the crime" does not exist and "the evidence" also does not exist, hence my initial question, evidence of what?
But a charge can exist, an assertion. The moment the charge is made by an officer of the court (or yes, even the suspicion and subsequent investigation), that is the moment when "ordinary personal property" turns into "evidence" subject to evidence-destruction laws. It is as simple as one person declaring it to be so. Given that this can happen for invalid reasons (such as wrongful accusation of someone as persecution for exercising his First Amendment rights as in this case), or for no reason at all, the potential for injustice is high. The fact that "knowingly" and "intent" are written into the laws is a good thing, but insufficient to make them just, in my opinion.
On a personal note, for you to be such a dick at the end of your comment is of course against the site guidelines but is also ironic given your own apparent inability to get my point (i.e. it's you who doesn't know what I'm talking about, not me), and your demonstrated cognitive inflexibility, poor reading skills and apparent inexperience with truths most Americans hold to be self-evident.
If a person did not know the phone had potential evidence then he wouldn't have intended or knowingly destroyed evidence and as such wouldn't be guilty of the crime...
He is not guilty of the crime, even today, and remains innocent unless and until due process establishes it.
Now to show you are moving the goal posts, go back to one of your previous posts and read "Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken?" and another one "how are you supposed to know when your own property is evidence and when it's not, when you've committed no crime?"
You clearly were trying to make a claim that a crime needs to be charged to be destruction of evidence.
You are guilty of committing a crime regardless if you are found guilty. If I murder somebody and I am not found guilty in a court would you say I am not guilty of committing the crime of murder?
I'm not going to address anything else since it is a complete waste of time discussing this with you.
It's fine if you want to disengage; I've certainly had much more stimulating discussions, where it actually went somewhere, like a dance.
Not that I agree at all what happened.
It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"
That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.
People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.
It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
It is subject to judicial review, but has equal standing.
So the US cannot "violate [it] at will".
SCOTUS has overwhelmingly sided with the Administration. Not always, but quite often.
The failure that allowed trump to happen stems from one thing. Lack of imagination. The system in the US assumes that all of the politicians are at least attempting to argue in good faith. trump is more like a hurricane. he rolled in, fucked everthing up, and will roll out.
After November when the Democrat party has control of the upper and lower houses of congress, there are going to be investigations, grand jury indictments, and people will go to prison. They will also begin the work of closing some of the loopholes that were used to bypass how the government is supposed to operate.
He didn't have "Putin next election year" merch for it, so I guess you can say this is innovation.
Citizens United was a decision by an unelected group of federal judges we call the Supreme Court when a case was brought before them to determine if chump could have Navy Seal Team 6 assinate a political opponent. They ruled, that yeah, he can. Supreme court justices are appointed for life and have no oversight or ethical restrictions.
They are bound by duty to be impartial. They are not.
The Supreme court is not supposed to MAKE law, that's the job of Congress, they are supposed to interpret the law. The Citizens United supreme court decision made new law, but it was made by people that were not elected by the citizens of this country. They are not acting in good faith, and are clearly in it to help chump.